First minister says ‘days of Westminster politicians telling Scotland what to do or what to think are over’ Alex Salmond has launched a fierce attack on the UK government, saying the future of Scotland will not be determined by Westminster. The Scottish first minister used his speech to the Scottish National party annual conference in Inverness to send the Westminster a stark message. “The days of Westminster politicians telling Scotland what to do or what to think are over,” he said. “The Scottish people will set the agenda for the future.” Salmond declared: “No politician, and certainly no London politician, will determine the future of the Scottish nation. “The prime minister should hear this loud and clear. “The people of Scotland – the sovereign people of Scotland – are now in the driving seat.” The conference is the SNP’s first since the party’s landslide victory in May’s Holyrood elections, when the nationalists became the first ever party to secure an overall majority in the Scottish parliament. Salmond said that win had given his party the “greatest ever mandate of the devolution era”. That election victory means a referendum will be held on Scottish independence. While no date for such a vote has yet been set, Nationalists have pledged it will take place in the second half of the Scottish parliament’s five-year term. The speech by Salmond marked the start of the SNP’s campaign ahead of that referendum. Ahead of the referendum, Salmond said that next month he would ask MSPs at Holyrood to endorse Scotland’s Claim of Right. The original Claim of Right dates back to 1988 and declared the “sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government best suited to their needs”. Nationalists believe that by endorsing this, MSPs will emphasise that a referendum on Scotland’s constitutional future is something for the Scottish parliament to deliver. The Scottish government has previously declared its willingness to consider having an option of Scotland gaining further short of independence on the ballot paper in the referendum. Salmond said that this “devo-max” option was a “legitimate proposal”, and that fiscal responsibility and enhanced economic powers could “allow us to control our own resources, introduce competitive business tax and fair personal taxation”. But he still described this option as being “not good enough”, adding: “Even with economic powers trident nuclear missiles would still be on the river Clyde, we could still be forced to spill blood in illegal wars like Iraq, and Scotland would still be excluded from the Councils of Europe and the world.” While Westminster has proposed further powers for the devolved Holyrood administration in its Scotland bill, Salmond said this was “unloved, uninspiring, not even understood by its own proponents”. And he claimed the coalition “hadn’t even gone through the motions of considering the views of the Scottish government” and others north of the border on the bill. After David Cameron promised to govern Scotland with respect, Salmond claimed that respect agenda now “lies dead in their throats”. He said: “This is Westminster’s agenda of disrespect – not of disrespect to the SNP but a fundamental disrespect for Scotland.” Almost 1,600 party members packed the main hall at the Eden Court theatre conference venue, and also filled five overspill rooms for Salmond’s keynote addresse. They heard the first minister launch a fresh attack on the UK government over its decision to abandon plans for the UK’s first coal-fired power plant with technology to capture and store carbon emissions at Longannet in Fife. Salmond accused Westminster of having “betrayed the future of Longannet”.He also made a renewed claim for Scotland to have control over energy and its revenues, saying that Westminster had “coined in” £300bn from North Sea oil and gas over the last 40 years. Salmond told the conference the North Sea would continue to yield oil and gas for the next four decades “at least” and added: “London has had its turn out of Scottish oil and gas. Let the next 40 years be for the people of Scotland.” Scottish National party (SNP) Scottish politics Alex Salmond Scotland guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …There’s a reason a big majority of the country approves of the Occupy Wall Street folks in spite of all the media derision and right-wing attacks, and a reason that demonstrators all over the country and world are organizing in their wake. The reason is that most people know what too many politicians in Washington don’t: that the big banks on Wall Street have a corrupt business model that recklessly assumes taxpayers will bail them out if their bets don’t pan out, and that their political juice will get them out of trouble if they violate laws and slide around regulations. There are three things in the news that remind us of this sorry story once again, and the American people need to raise holy hell about all of them: another sweetheart deal for Citibank on fraud charges, a new Bank of America maneuver that could turn into the biggest taxpayer bailout of all time, and a faction in the administration trying to ram through a new deal for all the big banks to have their legal issues related to foreclosure wiped away. First case in point: the astonishing (and so far mostly unnoticed) little slight-of-hand that Bank of America pulled when it switched over its Merrill Lynch-derived toxic assets to a federally insured program. Read this and weep: Bank of America is moving $75 trillion of highly risky derivative contracts “from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits.” The FDIC, which is the government agency that insures bank deposits, is screaming bloody murder, but the Federal Reserve wants to let them do it. This is a big f’ing deal, friends. Maybe the biggest swindle ever, certainly the biggest government bailout by far if the ship goes down. It makes TARP and Federal Reserve bailouts so far look like chump change. Remember, the Fed bailed out banks to the tune of a mere $16 trillion in 2008, and TARP threw in less than $1 trillion on top of that. Seventy-five trillion dollars is almost 5 times as much. Now, we don’t know how much of the $75 trillion us taxpayers would be responsible for in the end, because we don’t have access to Bank of America’s books, and the company hasn’t failed yet. But to allow taxpayers to be on the hook for this kind of exposure to even some part of a bank’s risky bets is an obscenity beyond belief. Then there is the latest Citibank settlement. Citibank agreed to pay $285 million to settle charges it defrauded investors in a billion-dollar mortgage security deal, and Citibank didn’t have to admit any wrongdoing. This kind of settlement happens all the time , and is yet another example of a corrupted system: mega-banks pay modest fines on massively fraudulent behavior; no one goes to jail, loses their jobs, or even has to admit wrongdoing. Breaking the law — stealing from and defrauding people— and then having your company stockholders pay one of these modest fines if you do get caught is just business as usual for these huge banks. And everyone in the industry knows it. When Hank Paulson, who was generally a great friend of the big banks as the Bush Treasury Secretary, wanted to force Wall Street banks to do something he considered urgent during the 2008 financial crisis, all he needed to do was to say he was going to have the FBI look at the banks’ books and emails. They would agree to anything he asked them to do, because they knew they all had plenty to hide. Bank of America and Citi are the two most wobbly banks of the Too Big to Fail crowd. The argument from 2008-on by Tim Geithner and other pro-Wall Street government officials is that we can’t do anything tough to these banks because it would cause system-wide risk. In fact, they say, we have to keep bailing them out, letting them off the hook for their legal transgressions, not be too tough on regulating them, not break them up, etc. because otherwise we will have another financial panic. But continuing to let them drain us dry isn’t working, and as Europe has discovered, at some point the bailouts get too big to take on. A $75 trillion bailout is too big a bailout number even for the U.S. government to contemplate dealing with, but Bank of America is trying to slide such a deal under our noses. Fortunately, Dodd-Frank did actually give us clear resolution authority for the Too Big to Fail banks. Banks have recapitalized themselves; the stress tests at least in theory gave government officials more knowledge of the banks’ asset holdings. Based on what Geithner himself has said, we should be in no danger of having to bail out Too Big to Fail banks. If they get in trouble, we can take them over just like the FDIC does, sell off their assets, and wind them down. And yet, we keep doing the bailing, as well as the winking and nodding at their fraudulent behavior. The BoA $75 trillion transfer to a federally insured subsidiary is the most egregious bailout yet. The Citibank wink and nod is the latest in a long line of letting crooks off the hook. And we may be on the verge of yet another massive sweetheart deal for the big banks, a deal that if it gets rammed through will not only absolve the biggest banks of all their legal violations, but a deal that would completely undercut any administration political claims that they are willing to take on Wall Street. Check this out : US state and federal officials plan to give the country’s largest mortgage servicers wider protection against legal claims in exchange for refinancing help for existing borrowers, as talks on a $25bn settlement of alleged foreclosure improprieties advance. The proposed agreement would settle allegations that Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial engaged in faulty mortgage practices, including employing so-called “robosigners” – agents who processed foreclosure filings en masse without examining the underlying paperwork – that abused homeowners’ rights and led to wrongful home seizures. The banks declined to comment. Now of course, reporters sometimes get things wrong, and I haven’t heard from the White House whether this story is accurate. What I suspect, in fact, is that there are two factions in the administration, one mostly from Treasury trying to get this done as quickly and quietly as they can, and one among the political staff at the White House who understand how insane it would be politically to give the banks yet another sweetheart deal after the President praised Occupy Wall Street and after David Plouffe told the Washington Post that they will be running against Wall Street in 2012. Understand that what’s spelled out in the Nasiripour story in terms of the legal release for the big banks sounds worse than what Tom Miller was trying to negotiate with them. Once again, big banks would get off with no legal accountability whatsoever for the crimes they committed, and the money they pocketed on fraudulent activities. And while $25 billion sounds like a lot of money, it is a mere fraction of what they made on activities that were clearly not legal, and it is an even smaller fraction of what is actually needed to help underwater homeowners maybe 5 percent of what is needed. Remember how bad HAMP was : this $25 billion program would be politically far worse, because administering a fund that inadequate to the problem would be a nightmare, and for every homeowner you helped, 19 would be ticked off because once again there was nothing to help them. This is a deal that I can absolutely guarantee to my friends in the administration will blow up in their faces badly if they go through with it. All those Occupy Wall Street demonstrators all across the country will be demonstrating against the White House. Labor unions and all the community groups doing bank actions will go crazy. Every economist and consumer group who has been working on the financial reform issue will react very badly. For Obama to run against Wall Street while handing the big banks another sweetheart deal, and getting the negative reaction it would cause, would be untenable. For all these reasons, I don’t think the President will go along with this deal. But as we know from the Suskind book , there are people in his administration who have a track record of acting on their own. Tim Geithner could well be (and from what some sources tell me, is) trying to ram this deal through while the President is dealing with getting our troops out of Iraq (thank you, Mr. President), and fighting with Republicans on taxing millionaires and billionaires. The RED ALERT in my headline is for the President as well as activists who care about this issue. We need to start reining in the big banks’ power to wreck our economy, and we can start by not giving them more sweetheart deals and bailouts.
Continue reading …There’s a reason a big majority of the country approves of the Occupy Wall Street folks in spite of all the media derision and right-wing attacks, and a reason that demonstrators all over the country and world are organizing in their wake. The reason is that most people know what too many politicians in Washington don’t: that the big banks on Wall Street have a corrupt business model that recklessly assumes taxpayers will bail them out if their bets don’t pan out, and that their political juice will get them out of trouble if they violate laws and slide around regulations. There are three things in the news that remind us of this sorry story once again, and the American people need to raise holy hell about all of them: another sweetheart deal for Citibank on fraud charges, a new Bank of America maneuver that could turn into the biggest taxpayer bailout of all time, and a faction in the administration trying to ram through a new deal for all the big banks to have their legal issues related to foreclosure wiped away. First case in point: the astonishing (and so far mostly unnoticed) little slight-of-hand that Bank of America pulled when it switched over its Merrill Lynch-derived toxic assets to a federally insured program. Read this and weep: Bank of America is moving $75 trillion of highly risky derivative contracts “from its Merrill Lynch unit to a subsidiary flush with insured deposits.” The FDIC, which is the government agency that insures bank deposits, is screaming bloody murder, but the Federal Reserve wants to let them do it. This is a big f’ing deal, friends. Maybe the biggest swindle ever, certainly the biggest government bailout by far if the ship goes down. It makes TARP and Federal Reserve bailouts so far look like chump change. Remember, the Fed bailed out banks to the tune of a mere $16 trillion in 2008, and TARP threw in less than $1 trillion on top of that. Seventy-five trillion dollars is almost 5 times as much. Now, we don’t know how much of the $75 trillion us taxpayers would be responsible for in the end, because we don’t have access to Bank of America’s books, and the company hasn’t failed yet. But to allow taxpayers to be on the hook for this kind of exposure to even some part of a bank’s risky bets is an obscenity beyond belief. Then there is the latest Citibank settlement. Citibank agreed to pay $285 million to settle charges it defrauded investors in a billion-dollar mortgage security deal, and Citibank didn’t have to admit any wrongdoing. This kind of settlement happens all the time , and is yet another example of a corrupted system: mega-banks pay modest fines on massively fraudulent behavior; no one goes to jail, loses their jobs, or even has to admit wrongdoing. Breaking the law — stealing from and defrauding people— and then having your company stockholders pay one of these modest fines if you do get caught is just business as usual for these huge banks. And everyone in the industry knows it. When Hank Paulson, who was generally a great friend of the big banks as the Bush Treasury Secretary, wanted to force Wall Street banks to do something he considered urgent during the 2008 financial crisis, all he needed to do was to say he was going to have the FBI look at the banks’ books and emails. They would agree to anything he asked them to do, because they knew they all had plenty to hide. Bank of America and Citi are the two most wobbly banks of the Too Big to Fail crowd. The argument from 2008-on by Tim Geithner and other pro-Wall Street government officials is that we can’t do anything tough to these banks because it would cause system-wide risk. In fact, they say, we have to keep bailing them out, letting them off the hook for their legal transgressions, not be too tough on regulating them, not break them up, etc. because otherwise we will have another financial panic. But continuing to let them drain us dry isn’t working, and as Europe has discovered, at some point the bailouts get too big to take on. A $75 trillion bailout is too big a bailout number even for the U.S. government to contemplate dealing with, but Bank of America is trying to slide such a deal under our noses. Fortunately, Dodd-Frank did actually give us clear resolution authority for the Too Big to Fail banks. Banks have recapitalized themselves; the stress tests at least in theory gave government officials more knowledge of the banks’ asset holdings. Based on what Geithner himself has said, we should be in no danger of having to bail out Too Big to Fail banks. If they get in trouble, we can take them over just like the FDIC does, sell off their assets, and wind them down. And yet, we keep doing the bailing, as well as the winking and nodding at their fraudulent behavior. The BoA $75 trillion transfer to a federally insured subsidiary is the most egregious bailout yet. The Citibank wink and nod is the latest in a long line of letting crooks off the hook. And we may be on the verge of yet another massive sweetheart deal for the big banks, a deal that if it gets rammed through will not only absolve the biggest banks of all their legal violations, but a deal that would completely undercut any administration political claims that they are willing to take on Wall Street. Check this out : US state and federal officials plan to give the country’s largest mortgage servicers wider protection against legal claims in exchange for refinancing help for existing borrowers, as talks on a $25bn settlement of alleged foreclosure improprieties advance. The proposed agreement would settle allegations that Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial engaged in faulty mortgage practices, including employing so-called “robosigners” – agents who processed foreclosure filings en masse without examining the underlying paperwork – that abused homeowners’ rights and led to wrongful home seizures. The banks declined to comment. Now of course, reporters sometimes get things wrong, and I haven’t heard from the White House whether this story is accurate. What I suspect, in fact, is that there are two factions in the administration, one mostly from Treasury trying to get this done as quickly and quietly as they can, and one among the political staff at the White House who understand how insane it would be politically to give the banks yet another sweetheart deal after the President praised Occupy Wall Street and after David Plouffe told the Washington Post that they will be running against Wall Street in 2012. Understand that what’s spelled out in the Nasiripour story in terms of the legal release for the big banks sounds worse than what Tom Miller was trying to negotiate with them. Once again, big banks would get off with no legal accountability whatsoever for the crimes they committed, and the money they pocketed on fraudulent activities. And while $25 billion sounds like a lot of money, it is a mere fraction of what they made on activities that were clearly not legal, and it is an even smaller fraction of what is actually needed to help underwater homeowners maybe 5 percent of what is needed. Remember how bad HAMP was : this $25 billion program would be politically far worse, because administering a fund that inadequate to the problem would be a nightmare, and for every homeowner you helped, 19 would be ticked off because once again there was nothing to help them. This is a deal that I can absolutely guarantee to my friends in the administration will blow up in their faces badly if they go through with it. All those Occupy Wall Street demonstrators all across the country will be demonstrating against the White House. Labor unions and all the community groups doing bank actions will go crazy. Every economist and consumer group who has been working on the financial reform issue will react very badly. For Obama to run against Wall Street while handing the big banks another sweetheart deal, and getting the negative reaction it would cause, would be untenable. For all these reasons, I don’t think the President will go along with this deal. But as we know from the Suskind book , there are people in his administration who have a track record of acting on their own. Tim Geithner could well be (and from what some sources tell me, is) trying to ram this deal through while the President is dealing with getting our troops out of Iraq (thank you, Mr. President), and fighting with Republicans on taxing millionaires and billionaires. The RED ALERT in my headline is for the President as well as activists who care about this issue. We need to start reining in the big banks’ power to wreck our economy, and we can start by not giving them more sweetheart deals and bailouts.
Continue reading …OWS protests (OCTET-STREAM – 172.9 KB) Unfortunately, decades of hate talk AM radio beginning with Rush Limbaugh, followed up by the creation of Fox News by Roger Ailes, have up to this point irrevocably damaged our political discourse and cultural lines that have defined the many faces of America’s past. I grew up in Astoria, Queens, a city that was dominated by an influx of Greek immigrants. If you make it down to Ditmars Blvd ., you can grab some of the best Greek food America has to offer. Latinos, Polish, Irish, Italian, African Americans, German and many other cultural backgrounds filled out the neighborhood. There were many different religions represented as well along with others that didn’t really pay much attention to it. It was the quintessential melting pot as they say of different cultures and beliefs that shared tight living quarters and for the most part lived together in harmony. Obviously it was far from perfect, but there wasn’t this toxic political divide between the groups–pitting right vs left, conservatives against liberals–that existed after the great right wing transmissions began, fueled by corporate interests and political and right wing religious operatives. In the Bush decade, conservatives have been thoroughly conditioned by an endless drone of conservative voices to not only hate liberals, but to also wish them to be exterminated from the two party system. Deleted , one might say in today’s techo-daze. A good example of what I’m talking about is the differences that you see by the OWS protesters and the tea party operatives and how they have been portrayed by the MSM, CNBC and Fox. The tea party has sided with Wall Street as epitomized by CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s rant on the stock exchange floor , which blamed the loser homeowners rather than the Wall Street excesses and cons that caused the collapse of the global financial markets, which in turn has ruined the world economies. And that means grief and hardship for the working class while the financial elites make huge profits. David Cay Johnson explains: First Look At US Pay Data, It’d Awful: There were fewer jobs and they paid less last year, except at the very top where, the number of people making more than $1 million increased by 20 percent over 2009. Digby wrote an excellent op-ed for al-Jazeera in which she discusses the two groups and how different and deep the divide is. T ea Partiers: The self-hating 99 per cent . Although the Tea Party and Occupy movement share surface similarities, they represent opposite world views. They should be with us at this moment in time, screaming for income and economic equality, but we’re the enemy. Rush Limbaugh, Billo, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck say so.
Continue reading …OWS protests (OCTET-STREAM – 172.9 KB) Unfortunately, decades of hate talk AM radio beginning with Rush Limbaugh, followed up by the creation of Fox News by Roger Ailes, have up to this point irrevocably damaged our political discourse and cultural lines that have defined the many faces of America’s past. I grew up in Astoria, Queens, a city that was dominated by an influx of Greek immigrants. If you make it down to Ditmars Blvd ., you can grab some of the best Greek food America has to offer. Latinos, Polish, Irish, Italian, African Americans, German and many other cultural backgrounds filled out the neighborhood. There were many different religions represented as well along with others that didn’t really pay much attention to it. It was the quintessential melting pot as they say of different cultures and beliefs that shared tight living quarters and for the most part lived together in harmony. Obviously it was far from perfect, but there wasn’t this toxic political divide between the groups–pitting right vs left, conservatives against liberals–that existed after the great right wing transmissions began, fueled by corporate interests and political and right wing religious operatives. In the Bush decade, conservatives have been thoroughly conditioned by an endless drone of conservative voices to not only hate liberals, but to also wish them to be exterminated from the two party system. Deleted , one might say in today’s techo-daze. A good example of what I’m talking about is the differences that you see by the OWS protesters and the tea party operatives and how they have been portrayed by the MSM, CNBC and Fox. The tea party has sided with Wall Street as epitomized by CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s rant on the stock exchange floor , which blamed the loser homeowners rather than the Wall Street excesses and cons that caused the collapse of the global financial markets, which in turn has ruined the world economies. And that means grief and hardship for the working class while the financial elites make huge profits. David Cay Johnson explains: First Look At US Pay Data, It’d Awful: There were fewer jobs and they paid less last year, except at the very top where, the number of people making more than $1 million increased by 20 percent over 2009. Digby wrote an excellent op-ed for al-Jazeera in which she discusses the two groups and how different and deep the divide is. T ea Partiers: The self-hating 99 per cent . Although the Tea Party and Occupy movement share surface similarities, they represent opposite world views. They should be with us at this moment in time, screaming for income and economic equality, but we’re the enemy. Rush Limbaugh, Billo, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck say so.
Continue reading …
• Turn on our auto-refresh tool for the latest updates • Email jacob.steinberg.casual@guardian.co.uk for a chat • Follow all the games with our live scores service • Follow Jacob on Twitter if that’s your thing 4.33pm: Has anyone ever sported a head of silver hair more imperiously than Ted Danson? 4.32pm: “Does Paul Scharner do the T-shirt and hair thing so we don’t get him mixed up with Novak Djokovic?” asks Gary Naylor. “Can we be sure they are not the same person? After all, Novak has form .” 4.29pm: What is going on at Leicester? They have just gone 3-0 down at home to Millwall. Liam Feeney with the goal, we hear. And Aaron McLean has equalised at the KC Stadium, making it Hull 2-2 Watford. “Hull City sacked Phil Brown 18 months ago. It’s been going pretty well under Nigel Pearson actually, but I guess he’s not good journo fodder,” says Jonathan Hopkin, who sadly doesn’t know a light-hearted yarn when he sees one. 4.28pm: Ginger Dave has made it Portsmouth 2-1 Doncaster . 4.26pm: The mystery is explained. Stelling’s vidiprinter is broken! He is bereft. I smell sabotage. 4.25pm: This is bizarre. Charlie Nicholas was talking about Newcastle v Wigan and in the background I swear I just heard Jeff Stelling say “I’m in trouble.” What the? 4.23pm: I have been watching the clock these last five minutes. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Ticktockticktockticktockticktockticktock TICKTOCKTICKTOCKTOCKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKBLOODYTOCK. Cardiff have gone 4-1 up against Barnsley. 4.18pm: Watford are back in front away to Hull and lead 2-1! Chris Iwelumo rises highest at the far post and nods into the Hull net. Teach them to sack Phil Brown. 4.17pm: Jordan Rhodes has a hat-trick for Huddersfield against Preston, who are 3-0 down. Rhodes now has 13 goals in his last five games . Wow. Coventry have opened the scoring at home to Burnley through Cody McDonald. GOAL! Aston Villa 1-2 West Brom (Scharner, 57 min): The ever-reliable Paul Scharner hooks in a volley from Chris Brunt’s outswinging corner. The goal had been coming, Villa’s 10 men being made to look increasingly ragged. Scharner celebrates by showing off the West Brom t-shirt which so riled Mick McCarthy last week. West Brom haven’t won at Villa Park since 1979. 4.14pm: So just how long is this Crystal Palace surge going to go on for? They’ve only gone and taken the lead through Paddy McCarthy at Ipswich, the defender heading in from Sean Scannell’s free-kick. It’s Ipswich 0-1 Crystal Palace . 4.12pm: And what do you know, Middlesbrough go straight up the other end, Justin Hoyte crosses and Marvin Emnes heads home. It’s Middlesbrough 2-0 Derby . The hosts will go second. At the Phil Brown Memorial Stadium, Matty Fryatt has made it Hull 1-1 Watford . 4.11pm: 15-year-old Mason Bennett has been denied a goal on his debut for Derby by a fine save from Middlesbrough’s goalkeeper Luke Steele, who has a heart of stone. Well done, he’s only 15 . 4.08pm: Steve Claridge, 87, has scored on his debut for Gosport Borough in the FA Trophy. Wigtown, Keith scoring for Keith, Claridge … what an afternoon. Who needs the Premier League? 4.07pm: Hatem Ben Arfa has come on for Newcastle in a bid to liven things up. 4.06pm: “Come on, surely there’s enough hyperbole in football as there is,” says Mark Guthrie. “A torn shoelace does not a pair of broken shoes make. Any good cobblers, Clarks, or even supermarkets nowadays carry good quality shoelaces that could save those brogues from the scrap heap. Take heart good man, your saturday could improve.” Worst aspect of this story is that the shoes aren’t even mine. 4.05pm: 45 minutes more of this and then it’s Saturday night. Your plans? “Come on dude, U2 rock (in every sense!) and Beautiful Day is still the best recent football-linked song (er, quite the accolade),” says Ryan Dunne. “Their best work will surely outlast all the views and tunes of those who view this as an unironic lifestyle guide! And Achtung Baby, one of the most seminal albums of the last twenty years, is the equal or superior to the best of REM or Radiohead!” I know you’re not being serious. 4.02pm: It would appear that Chris Herd’s red card for Villa was for a stamp on Jonas Olsson. “Good on Simon Gillett,” says Niall Mullen. “I think that might Mach 3 goals he has now scored for Donny.” Back in 10 minutes. Until then. Half time: Bolton 0-0 Sunderland. I forgot this game was going on. 3.49pm: Blimey. Darius Henderson has his second and it’s Leicester 0-2 Millwall. He’s doubled his account for the season. Poor old Sven. Half time: Newcastle 0-0 Wigan. Half time: Aston Villa 1-1 West Brom. 3.48pm: West Brom are threatening to run away with this now. Peter Odemwingie has the ball in the Villa net, but the whistle blows for a very marginal offside against the Nigerian striker. 3.47pm: Wigtown are 9-0 down at home to Stranraer. Middlesbrough lead Derby 1-0 thanks to Rhys Williams’ strike. GOAL! Aston Villa 1-1 West Brom (Olsson, 45 min): Villa’s 10 men are unable to hold on, as Olsson heads the equaliser for West Brom a corner. Both sides have reasons to be very upset indeed with Phil Dowd’s performance. At least he’s not biased. 3.44pm: Kevin Phillips shows his class with a glorious equaliser for Blackpool against Forest. “Gillet: the net this man can get?” offers Observer scribe Jamie Jackson, whose P45 is being drafted as we speak. 3.43pm: STOP FOOTBALL. THERE IS NOWHERE LEFT TO GO FROM HERE. Cammy Keith has scored for Keith. 3.42pm: “Enjoying today’s hot clock action, Jacob, but I have a question: is it acceptable to listen to Coldplay whilst doing so, or are they too uncool for a Guardian-hosted service?” asks Ryan Dunne. “They do, in one’s defence, have some catchy tunes, and a song actually called Clocks. They’re not as good as U2 though.” As good at U2 at what? Because you can’t be talking about doing music. 3.40pm: The Steve Cotterill honeymoon shows no sign of ending. It’s Blackpool 0-1 Nottingham Forest thanks to a close-range header from Wes Morgan. “How’re you enjoying your saturday so far?” asks Mark Guthrie. I broke some shoes this morning, so I’ve had better. Tore the shoelaces by mistake. “I’m watching the Newcastle vs Wigan game (as a Newcastle fan). Like so often this season Gutierrez and Obertan get into promising positions yet fail to deliver anything that could be considered a decent opportunity. It’s got me thinking, yet again. Are there any other teams with a pair of wingers who look so dangerous, so potentially formidable, that get into the final third of the pitch and look as effective as a second hand condom at a bed of nails convention.” 3.39pm: The comeback is off! Aron Gunnarsson has made it Cardiff 3-1 Barnsley . The upsets keep on coming in the Championship as James Chester’s own goal makes it Hull 0-1 Watford . 3.38pm: Ah, but Daniel Drinkwater has made it Cardiff 2-1 Barnsley . The comeback is on! 3.37pm: There’s a shock on the cards at the Walkers Stadium, where it’s Leicester 0-1 Millwall after Darius Henderson’s penalty. Joe Mason has also made it Cardiff 2-0 Barnsley . 3.36pm: Chris Brunt puts his penalty wide for West Brom! Justice, apparently, done. No one knows what the penalty was for or why Chris Herd was sent off. 3.34pm: Incredible scenes at Villa Park! Phil Dowd has awarded West Brom a penalty for a foul by Richard Dunne on Jonas Olsson and has then sent off Chris Herd for … well, no one knows. Villa are down to 10 men. 3.34pm: “Chance!” parps Charlie Nicholas. “Gooooo-ooohhhh what a save.” Al-Habsi makes a fantastic save from Leon Best at St James’ Park. 3.32pm: No goals at Bloomfield Road, but Alan McInally is very excited that the sun is shining. He is Scottish, I suppose. 3.28pm: WARNING! PUN-FREE ZONE Simon Gillett booms a marvellous volley into the Portsmouth net from a John Oster corner to equalise for Doncaster at Fratton Park. Don’t start. WALK AWAY FROM THE PUN 3.27pm: Wigtown are proving a draw. “Wigtown & Bladnoch v Stranraer,” muses Sean Flynn. “Big local derby there Jacob. Sort of. And I say big, needless to say I’d never heard of W&B before you mentioned them. I bloody love fitba me.” 3.26pm: “W&B’s team name would be improved even further if the odd typo changed Bladnoch so it was Wigtown and Baldnog,” says Robin Hazlehurst. “Sounds like a children’s story, ‘Wigtown and the Bald Noggin’ or somesuch.” With John Madejski as the kindly town mayor? 3.24pm: I haven’t seen what happened, but apparently the tackle from Alan Hutton which led to Shane Long going off was very poor and perhaps should have been a straight red card. As it was, he didn’t get booked – but has since been cautioned for another foul. Given that the penalty was apparently a bit iffy, West Brom will be fuming. GOAL! Aston Villa 1-0 West Brom (Bent pen, 23 min): Darren Bent sends Foster the wrong way from the spot to give Villa the lead and make up for his earlier miss. 3.21pm: Things go from bad to worse for West Brom, a mix-up from Reid and Foster leading to the goalkeeper fouling Agbonlahor. Villa have a penalty. 3.20pm: Shane Long has gone off injured for West Brom and Somen Tchoyi is on for him. That’s a big blow for West Brom, who are struggling for goals this season. They’ve managed seven in total. Oh Roy. 3.18pm: There’s a Scottish team called Wigtown & Bladnoch. They’re losing 6-0 at home to Stranraer, but they take the prize for the best team name in all of football. They could have sponsored Liverpool last season. 3.17pm: Wigan are continuing to create chances against Newcastle, and Rodallega has just blazed wide of the near post. Newcastle’s unbeaten record is ever so slightly under threat here. 3.15pm: Albion have scored … against Arbroath. Boom! Gotcha! At Villa Park, it’s still 0-0. 3.13pm: Big news. It’s Peterhead 1-0 Nairn County. There’s no stopping Martin Bavidge. 3.11pm: Cardiff lead 1-0 against Barnsley thanks to Kenneth Miller’s typically calm finish. They’ll not be troubling the play-offs though. 3.09pm: 15-year-old Mason Bennett is yet to have a touch for Derby. MASON BENNETT IS IN CRISIS. WHAT IS WRONG WITH MASON BENNETT? 3.08pm: The Blackpool midfield is made up of McManaman and Ince, conjuring memories of the glorious Liverpool 1999 vintage and the Evans-Houllier duopoly. 3.06pm: Wigan have started very confidently at Newcastle and could have had a penalty, while Rodallega has also brought the best out of Tim Krul. 3.05pm: Darren Bent, £24m, has missed a sitter for Aston Villa. “Re Wolves, crowds, like mobs, don’t do nuance,” says Gary Naylor. “If football wanted nuanced opinions from fans, they’d all be set up like AFC Wimbledon instead of being set up like News Corporation.” 3.03pm: No goals yet in the top flight. Maybe the beancounters can make it compulsory for teams to score in order to improve the Premier League brand. Meanwhile managerless Portsmouth lead 1-0 against Doncaster thanks to Luke Varney. 3.01pm: Over on Sky Sports Two, Mick McCarthy has just been asked what he thought the reason was for Wolves’ comeback earlier. “Not telling,” was his forthright answer. Still, not as amusing as Rafa Benitez being “focused on training and coaching my team”. 3pm: Peep! “By Wolves fans disgracing themselves, do you mean their calling for the head of Mick McCarthy?” asks Gary Naylor. “A tad premature, I agree, but it’s not always wrong for fans to demand change in the management or the boardroom. For every club that sticks with a manager and sees better days as a result, there are those who stick with a manager and go down. As an Evertonian, I know that the board left it to the very last minute to replace Walter Smith ten seasons ago with David Moyes who saved the club from the fate that befell Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday, Leeds United and many, many more clubs who have found Premier League status hard to recover once lost.” Did you hear them though? There’s voicing displeasure and then there’s downright nastiness. At the Riverside, Derby have named Mason Bennett up front. His age? 15 years and 99 days. The club had to get the permission of his mum and school to play. I note Wolves fans have disgraced themselves in their draw with Swansea . What a shower. Get your team news here. Fresh off the wires. Smell the copy! Feel the paste! Aston Villa v West Brom Aston Villa: Given; Hutton, Collins, Dunne, Warnock; Herd, Petrov, Bannan, N’Zogbia; Bent, Agbonlahor. Subs: Guzan, Ireland, Albrighton, Delfouneso, Heskey, Clark, Cuellar. West Brom: Foster; Reid, McAuley, Olsson, Jones; Brunt, Mulumbu, Scharner, Thomas; Odemwingie, Long. Subs: Fulop, Tchoyi, Morrison, Shorey, Gera, Dawson, Cox. Referee: Phil Dowd (Staffordshire) Bolton v Sunderland Bolton: Jaaskelainen; Boyata, Cahill, Wheater, Robinson; Eagles, Reo-Coker, Pratley, Petrov; K. Davies, Ngog. Subs: Bogdan, Sanli, Gardner, Knight, Mark Davies, Klasnic, Kakuta. Sunderland: Mignolet; O’Shea, Brown, Turner, Richardson; Larsson, Colback, Vaughan, Sessegnon; Wickham, Bendtner. Subs: Westwood, Bardsley, Cattermole, Gardner, Ji, Meyler, Elmohamady. Referee: Mike Jones (Cheshire) Newcastle v Wigan Newcastle: Krul; Simpson, Steven Taylor, Coloccini, Ryan Taylor; Obertan, Cabaye, Tiote, Gutierrez; Best, Ba. Subs: Harper, Santon, Ben Arfa, Perch, Smith, Marveaux, Shola Ameobi. Wigan: Al Habsi; Boyce, Alcaraz, Caldwell, Figueroa; Jones, Watson, Diame, Moses; Rodallega, Crusat. Subs: Pollitt, Thomas, Maloney, Gomez, McArthur, Sammon, Lopez. Referee: Neil Swarbrick (Lancashire) Enjoy this while there’s still time. By, let’s say, 2013 matches of this nature in the Premier League will be rendered utterly irrelevant when those poindexters in the boardrooms work out the way to avoid their own incompetence having any consequence is to just get rid of relegation. Kids, struggling with your homework? Just don’t do it! Can’t be bothered to do your tax return? Just don’t do it! Life is so much simpler this way. Sure, English football will be shorn of inconsequential matter such as competitiveness, sporting interest and relevance, but who cares about things like that when there’s money to be made? People who need to get with the programme and engage in some blue-sky thinking, that’s who. But for now, this bumper Premier League programme, replete with three whole games, matters. Perhaps the biggest game of the afternoon comes at the Reebok Stadium, where 18th meets 17th. Only goal difference is keeping Sunderland above Owen Coyle’s Bolton, who got back to winning ways last week at Wigan (and more of them later), while Steve Bruce’s side were unfortunate to lose to Matt Le Tissier Robin van Persie. They’ve been dreadful this season though, have the Mackems, and the last time I watched them play they were comprehensively outdone by Norwich City. It’s difficult to pinpoint where it’s all going wrong: the squad is relatively strong and money has been spent – which means at times like these, you start to look at the manager. Bolton have had a terrible start as well, but because of their difficult run of games, we’ll only really know how their season will pan out after the next month or so. Just to compound Sunderland’s misery, Newcastle are having a whale of a time. Fourth place, unbeaten and playing some great stuff, expect that to continue against Wigan today. Wigan have managed one win all season and that was against QPR, when Franco di Santo of all people scored twice. A once-in-a-lifetime achievement at the same time as a once-in-a-season achievement? The way they’re going, you wouldn’t be surprised. The final game is between Aston Villa, who are doing a stand-up job of existing this season, and West Brom, who are managed by Liverpool favourite Roy Hodgson. It’s sunny by the way, so… Now then, in time this won’t matter, etc etc and so on and I’m repeating myself now. But there’s a few big games in the Championship as well featuring teams hoping to win promotion to the Premier League while they still can. At Portman Road, rising force Ipswich Town (the best Championship side I’ve seen this season) take on Crystal Palace, whose youngsters are worth keeping an eye on, though not in a sinister way. A win for either side could take them second, though they’ll be dependent on affairs at the Riverside, where Middlesbrough face Derby County, a match that has a real late-90s-early-noughties Premier League feel about it. Third v fourth there, only goal difference separating them. The leaders Southampton don’t play at Reading until 5.20pm – they’re five points clear at the moment, so this is a chance to eat into the gap. The Championship is ludicrous. Birmingham are 16th and are seven points off second place. Premier League Jacob Steinberg guardian.co.uk
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Demonstrators say they are prepared to remain at London landmark until the government changes direction Protesters in London remained in defiant mood on Saturday, insisting that they would not be forced from their tented village outside St Paul’s Cathedral. A week on from the start of the protest, the Occupy London Stock Exchange group said it was prepared to stay at the landmark “until there is a change in direction from the government”. The demonstrators’ latest pledge came as senior officials from St Paul’s met City of London Corporation (CLC) officials to discuss the decision to close the cathedral for the first time since the second world war. Protest organisers said they had complied with every request the cathedral had made and would continue to obey any further demands to ensure the camp stayed. A volunteer for the Occupy movement, Peter Vaughan, 24, from Hackney, east London, said: “We feel we have addressed all their health and safety concerns. We don’t want a battle with the church.” Attempting to explain why the cathedral had appeared to backtrack from its support of the occupation earlier in the week, Vaughan speculated that church officials may have been under pressure from those with financial interests in the City. The dean of St Paul’s, the Rev Graeme Knowles, said the closure was necessary because health and safety, and fire officers had identified unknown quantities of flammable liquids, along with smoking and drinking in tented areas, which compromised fire exits. He also cited public health issues such as sanitation and food hygiene. “The decision to close St Paul’s Cathedral is unprecedented in modern times,” Knowles said. “We have done this with a very heavy heart, but it is simply not possible to fulfil our day to day obligations to worshippers, visitors and pilgrims in current circumstances. “I hope that the protesters will understand the issues we are facing, recognise that their voice has been legitimately heard, and withdraw peacefully.” OccupyLSX estimated that hundreds would swell the camp on Saturday for a series of talks and demonstrations, potentially taking the number of demonstrators up to 2,000. A wedding at St Paul’s nevertheless went ahead on Saturday despite its closure to the general public. Natasha Ighodaro arrived at the cathedral to marry Nick Cunningham against a backdrop of dozens of tents and a banner reading “capitalism is crisis”. The bride and groom had earlier posted a message on Facebook to reassure their guests that the ceremony was going ahead: “We’re looking forward to seeing friends and family at the wedding … and are pleased that it is going ahead as planned.” Occupy LSX supporter Ronan McNern said protesters cleared a space for the wedding party but the bride had to enter the cathedral from a side door as the building’s main entrance was shut. “Closing it doesn’t make sense,” he said. “But it was their choice to close. We made sure the steps were clear so people could get in.” Another supporter, Jenny, a 23-year-old human rights student from Harrow, north London, said: “I don’t want to disrupt a place of worship. I heard the bride was happy for protesters to be here.” Despite the closure of the cathedral, which is a major tourist attraction, most visitors to the site said they believed the presence of the camp, comprising around 200 tents, enhanced the building’s exterior. Earlier, Eqyptian activist Nawal El Saadawi, who was celebrating her 80th birthday, addressed the crowd on the steps of the cathedral. Hours after flying in from Cairo, she likened the tents around St Paul’s to those that occupied Tahrir Square during the uprising: “All over the world it’s a global revolution. We must fight together.” Occupy London London Protest Mark Townsend guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media At a campaign event in Detroit Friday, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain revealed exceptions to his 9-9-9 tax proposal that make the plan less like the flat tax that his supporters have made it out to be. Cain scheduled Friday’s speech after other Republican candidates attacked his plan at Tuesday’s CNN debate. “This is a day that we have an opportunity to explain 9-9-9 without six attacks at one time,” Cain declared. “So, here are two of the features my competitors didn’t get to when they didn’t read the plan… If you are at or below the poverty level, your plan isn’t 9-9-9, it’s 9-0-9. Say, amen, y’all. 9-0-9. In other words, if you are at or below the poverty level based on family size and because it’s a different number for each one then you don’t pay that middle nine tax on your income.” He continued: “The ‘opportunity zones’ will allow cities like Detroit to qualify for additional exemptions relative to the first nine. Right now on the first nine, you can deduct purchases if you are a business, you can deduct capital expenditures, net exports, but for those cities that will qualify as ‘opportunity zones,’ you will also be able to deduct a certain amount of your payroll expenses so you will be incentited [sic] to put people to work.” The Wall Street Journal ‘s Stephen Moore has praised Cain’s plan as coming “closest to a true flat tax.” “His argument for a ’9-9-9′ plan puts the current income and payroll taxes in the shredder and replaces them with a 9% personal income tax with no deductions, a 9% net business income tax, and a 9% national sales tax,” Moore wrote in September. “That would be rocket fuel for the economy, though the combination of a federal sales tax and an income tax is a big worry.”
Continue reading …Eric Cantor chickened out of a long-planned lecture at Wharton when he found out Occupy Philly was planning a march in his honor: U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican majority leader in the U.S. House, canceled his scheduled speech at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business because if was going to be open to the first 300 people who showed up. Given that hundreds of Occupy Philadelphia protesters were planning to march from City Hall to the campus to protest the speech, that could have been a lively audience. “The Office of the Majority Leader was informed last night by Capitol Police that the University of Pennsylvania was unable to ensure that the attendance policy previously agreed to could be met ,” Cantor spokeswoman Laena Fallon said in an email. “Wharton is a educational leader in innovation and entrepreneurship, and the Majority Leader appreciated the invitation to speak with the students, faculty, alumni, and other members of the UPenn community.” Cantor had expected that his speech, on income disparity in the country, would be open to the media, Wharton students and faculty and guests of the university. The Daily Pennsylvanian , the student newspaper, has more here. You might want to read the comments from some of the Wharton students, who are clearly convinced of their own superiority.
Continue reading …Time to #OccupyDelta? Union Busting Airlines Screwing Consumers While Lavishing Congress With Perks
October 22, 2011 No CommentWe have written extensively about Delta here at Crooks and Liars. This union busting, consumer hating enterprise is the Scott-Walker-in -the-Sky Airlines . So it was no surprise this week when we learned more disturbing information about how Delta continues to screw American consumers while buying the politicians in D.C. Over at AmericaBlog, Aravosis wrote this week how carriers like Delta have been basically making “a windfall” during recession by taxing American consumers through exorbitant baggage fees in recent years. Now comes a report from the Roll Call that Delta has been buying congressional influence through offering ridiculous perks not available to average consumers (emphasis added): Some perks reach beyond the Beltway. Most major airlines have phones lines dedicated to customers on Capitol Hill, aides and lobbyists told Roll Call. To accommodate their unpredictable travel schedules, Members are allowed to reserve seats on multiple flights but pay only for the one they board. A spokesman for Delta confirmed the airline has a Congressional call desk and allows Members to double-book flights . United Continental Holdings Inc., US Airways and American Airlines, all of which are rumored to have similar practices, did not return Roll Call’s request for comment. “We get on every single flight,” said one Capitol Hill aide familiar with process. “Every offices uses it. … The scheduler uses it for Members and chiefs of staff who fly.” The perks have long raised the ire of consumer advocates. “They are treated completely differently from the time they book their ticket until the time they land at the airport ,” said Kate Hanni, director of Flyers Rights, an airline passenger advocacy organization. The news about Delta is not surprising. They have a history of rewarding members of congress – mostly Republicans – who help further their anti-union goals. As Campaign Money Watch reported recently, “Delta’s been spending money wisely to try to overturn the decision to let workers organize more easily. They spent $1.6 million on lobbying during the first half of 2011, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. (Over the past ten years they spent at least $32 million to influence Washington.) Their PAC has given $826,243 to members of Congress since 2000. Adding additional incentive for Republicans in Congress to stand with them, Richard Anderson, Delta’s CEO, made a $5,000 contribution to the Senate Republican’s campaign committee earlier this year — apparently his first one ever.” Also reported by the Atlanta Journal Constitution were Delta’s timely contributions to key Members of Congress to drive the unrelated, ideologically anti-union provisions included in the House version of the FAA Reauthorization legislation. It sounds like Delta is making a clear stake at positioning itself as the airlines of the 1 percent. Maybe it is time to #OccupyDelta?
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